25 Awesome People That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

Erik Bjørnøy (the gentleman holding the sheep in the photo) was with a group of friends when he spotted the sheep in the water. “I saw a little white dot in the water and was curious about what it was. When I came closer, I saw that there was a sheep and shouted at the others,” says Erik Bjørnøy. The courage of this young man and his friends saved the life of the poor sheep and taught us that there are still good people in the world.

David Tree was battling an intentional forest fire when he spotted the poor little animal. “Koalas are usually quite grumpy, but this one took my hand. She was distressed, exhausted,” says David in an article for The Guardian. Thanks to David’s kindness, the Koala was taken to a wildlife center where it was named Sam. Unfortunately, Sam died of chlamydia which is a common infection for koalas.

Speaking of animal rescues, Naude Dreyer, owner of a sea kayaking company based out of Walvis Bay in Namibia was filmed saving the life of a stranded juvenile Benguela dolphin. Naude carefully picked the dolphin up from the beach and placed it in the water.

Jacqueline Nytepi Kiplimo is a Kenyan marathoner with a significant amount of wins under her belt. However, on this day, Jacqueline did something mind-blowing: she gave up her chance at winning $10,000 in order to help a dehydrated athlete. This happened during the 2010 Zheng-Kai marathon where Jacqueline saw the disabled Chinese athlete struggling to drink water. She decided to run with the athlete from the 10km to the 38km mark while helping him get water from the water stations. This slowed her down and cost her the first place (she came in second) and with it, the $10,000 prize money.

✂️ Madison Square Park, NYC. September 26, 2017 Gary, “I don’t think I need a haircut.” 20 minutes later. “I haven’t felt a breeze hit my scalp like this in 6 months. It feels so good.” #BeAwesomeToSomebody

A post shared by Mark Bustos (@markbustos) on Sep 28, 2017 at 6:27am PDT

Mark Bustos is a barber from New York city who chooses to give homeless people free haircuts on Sundays (his day off). Bustos has been cutting hair since he was 14 years old and started giving free cuts during a family trip to the Philippines (his native country). “There is so much negativity in this world today,” Bustos told TODAY.com, “and I just simply wanted to bring some positive energy and hope in this world”.

The story behind this photo will touch your heart. In 2015, an elderly man was shoveling the driveway on this photo when he suddenly had a heart attack. The Greenfield Fire Department responded to the call and took the man to the hospital. Afterwards, they came back to the elderly man’s home and finished shoveling the man’s driveway. These paramedics definitely went above and beyond their call of duty.

While trying to get off a train in Saitama, North of Tokyo; a woman fell in a gap between the train and the platform. About 40 passengers rushed to try and move the train just enough to get the woman out. They were successful, and the woman in her 30’s was not seriously hurt.

Narayanan Krishnan was a young award-winning chef who worked for a five-star hotel and was short-listed for an elite position in Switzerland. All of that changed, however, when Krishnan made a short family visit before heading to Europe. “I saw a very old man eating his own human waste for food,” Krishnan said. “It really hurt me so much…After that, I started feeding that man and decided this is what I should do the rest of my lifetime.” Krishnan then founded his nonprofit Akshya trust in 2003 and has been serving India’s homeless since then.

It’s sad, but there are many people who abandon their aging parents. Some go to homes where they dwindle away into an afterthought after many years of service to their children. Enter Dr. Uday Modi. A practicing doctor out of Bhayandar, Mumbai, India, Dr. Modi started a free tiffin service designed to feed close to 500 old people a day. Similar to chef Krishnan, Dr. Modi started his service after coming in contact with a poor elderly couple who needed food.

Associated Press photographer Dar Yasin was on assignment in Srinagar when he noticed Khusboo Jan bleeding profusely. When she collapsed, the friends that were with her called out for help, but none of the onlookers offered any. Dar Yasin decided to take the girl and rushed her to the nearest hospital. This picture was posted on Facebook by another photojournalist named Faisal Khan.

Dar Yasin is not the only photojournalist to have saved the life of another while on duty. In 2015, a bomb hit a convoy of buses carrying evacuees from besieged Syrian villages. Photographer and activist Abd Alkader Habak was knocked out by the blast, but when he came to, what he saw horrified him. “The scene was horrible–especially seeing children wailing and dying in front of you,” Habak told CNN. Habak proceeded to rescue people by searching for survivors. He found the boy in the picture barely breathing and ran with him to the nearest ambulance. Unfortunately, 68 children died in the attack.

What would you do if you found $5,020 in a discarded refrigerator? Would you return it? If your name is Magda Castillo, you’d hope somebody would. Magda lost her money when she stored it in an old refrigerator. When her husband decided to take the refrigerator to the recycling center, the money went with it. It wasn’t until later that Magda had realized what had happened. She went to the recycling place to see if someone had found the money, but at that moment, no one had. After she left, however, employee Mike Downer was able to locate the refrigerator and retrieve the money. Because Magda had left without giving contact information, the workers used social media to reach her. Eventually, Magda and all of her $5,020 were reunited.

$5,000 dollars is a lot of money, but $20,000 is significantly more…four times more to be exact. Especially if you happen to be unemployed. This was the case for Candace Scott, an unemployed teacher who so happened to find a cash bag containing $20,000 on the side of the road. Instead of keeping the money, she returned the money to the bank (the bag had the bank logo on it). “I found something that didn’t belong to me,” Scott told KBTX. “And I wanted to return it to the person it belonged to.” For her good heart, Chase bank gave her a $500.00 gift card.

When a woman climbed to the top of a billboard sign in Beijing, China, police arrived to try and talk her down. One of the officers decided to handcuff himself to the woman in order to make sure that she did not jump. “She knew then that if she died, she’d take someone with her and that seemed to bring her back,” said one officer. The brave act saved the woman’s life, who was then brought back into the building via ropes.

This picture was taken in October 2006 and shows one of the most heartbreaking but tender of moments. The little girl in the picture lost both her parents and many of her siblings due to an attack by insurgents in Iraq. The insurgents shot the little girl in the head but she survived and was treated at the U.S. military hospital in Balad. During her healing process, the little girl would cry and moan. However, according to nurses, she seemed to respond exclusively to Chief Master Sgt. John Gebhardt (in the picture). So John spent several nights holding the little girl while they both slept in a chair. The little girl was eventually released to a surviving family member.

If you want to see even more examples of people who will restore your faith in humanity, check out this list.

Dan Black was paralyzed when he was knocked off his bike in 2009. In order to pay for a new and developing (at that time) stem cell treatment, Dan raised £20,000 over the course of four years. However, after Dan read about Brecon, a boy who suffers from spastic diplegia cerebral palsy, he decided to donate the £20,000 to Brecon. “I wanted to help someone whose life could get better.” Dan said concerning his generous gift, “If I can help someone to walk, I will.”

Mohammad Alaa Aljaleel is known as the ‘the cat man of Aleppo.’ His compassion for felines has led him to stay behind in a war-torn city from which many of his friends fled. He established a cat sanctuary where he cares for hundreds of cats left behind by those fleeing the city. “I said I’ll stay with them no matter what happens,” Mohammad said. “Someone who has mercy in their hearts for humans has mercy for every living thing.”

Cats are not the only animals being saved. Marc Ching, an American activist and founder of Animal Hope & Wellness, saved 1,000 dogs from the 2016 10-day dog meat festival in China. As many as 10,000 dogs are killed during this 10-day festival, many of which are believed to have been pets stolen from the streets. For his efforts, Ching has been beaten, shot, hospitalized, and even almost died. “These dogs, they are brothers. They are sisters. They are fathers and mothers. They are children. They deserve a chance.” Ching says. “All life deserves chance.”

It’s hard to believe that there are people in this world who would leave a defenseless child out on his own to die, but that’s exactly what a Nigerian family did to the child in this picture. The reason? They thought the child was a witch. This poor little guy had to survive off of scraps. However, this beautiful little boy was saved by Anja Ringgren Loven, a Danish woman living in Africa. She took him to the hospital where they treated him for worms. They also performed daily blood transfusions to boost red blood cells in his body. The boy who is now named Hope made a full recovery and is now “really enjoying his life.”

Showering is not just about getting yourself clean, it’s about dignity. One man is fighting hard to restore that dignity to homeless people in greater St. Louis. Jake Austin, a 31-year-old pastor from St. Louis, Missouri purchased an old truck and transformed it into a mobile showering unit. The truck has two shower stalls, changing areas, sinks, mirrors, and toiletries with towels. The truck offers around 60 hot showers a day and uses fire hydrants with an external generator to provide hot showers for the homeless.

Campbell “Bumble” Remess is not like most kids. Instead of playing on a game console or watching a movie, Campbell can usually be found on a sewing machine, making stuffed toys for sick children all around the world. It all started when Campbell was 9. One day, he asked his mom if he could buy Christmas gifts for sick children. His parents said no. (Campbell is one of 9 children in the family, so buying gifts for even more children would have been expensive.) But Campbell didn’t let “no” stop him and decided to learn how to sew stuffed toys, which he then personally gave to sick children in hospitals. Currently, Campbell makes toys for kids all over the world and uses donations for materials. “Campbell is just wired really differently,” his mom said in a video. “He looks at sadness and tries to turn it upside down.”

Members of Animal Aid Unlimited, a street animal rescue team in India which houses over 4,500 animals each year, found this poor puppy close to death. As the rescuers approached, however, the severely ill and weak puppy wagged its tail. The dog was covered in sores and was suffering from canine distemper, a disease for which there is no cure. However, a vet with Animal Aid Unlimited attached a drip and treated the pup for the deadly disease. The pup is living an active life, alive and happy.

Hurricane Harvey caused around $180 billion in damage when it hit Texas on August 25, 2017. 82 people died and 39,000 people were flooded out of their homes. Amidst the horror of this natural disaster, Houston deputies worked tirelessly with state and military emergency workers to rescue roughly 100 people every hour on the Sunday of August 27, 2017 (two days after the hurricane hit). This picture is of Deputy Sheriff Bob Goerlitz, who passed out from sheer exhaustion after working around the clock to help victims of hurricane Harvey.

University of New Hampshire track and field athlete Cameron Lyle was given a choice: save a person that only has six months to live or compete in a championship. For Cameron, the decision was “a no-brainer.” The 21-year-old had joined the bone marrow registry during his sophomore year and was eventually contacted as a 100 percent match for a man dying of Leukemia. The 28-year-old leukemia patient was only given six months to live. The two-hour procedure to donate the bone marrow required the insertion of a needle into Cameron’s hip in order to collect two liters of bone marrow. However, as part of the recovery, Cameron would not be able to lift anything over 20lbs over his head for a few weeks which ruled him out for the heavy objects he tosses during competition. “It’s OK,” Cameron told Today. “It was worth it. I would do it again, too.”

Officer Gaetano Acerra responded to a 13-year-old’s call where he threatened to run away. What Acerra saw would change his life. When Acerra arrived at Cameron Simmons’ house, he found that the boy had no bed to sleep in and had most of his clothes in large black bags. The officer then took it upon himself to buy Cameron a new bed, TV, desk, and even a Wii game system. “The kid was in tears,” Acerra said. “He was just in shock, so happy. He still is.” Inspired by the officer’s generosity, people all over the world are contacting officer Acerra to see how they can help.